Kiwi Chateau     

Drive-Time (Via Michelin):

     Embry to Dover Castle:
          Embry to Coquelles EuroTunnel:
               1hr 5 mins (60 miles incl motorways)
          EuroTunnel:
               Waiting-Time plus 35 mins for the train.
          Folkestone EuroTunnel to Dover Castle:
               29 mins (13 miles)

EuroTunnel Costs for 1-day Return: Circa £48 

Address:           Castle Hill, Dover, Kent CT16 1HU

Web:                http://www.english-heritage.org.uk
                       /daysout/properties/dover-castle

Admission:         English Heritage Members: Free
                       Adults: £17
                       Family: £44.20 (2 adults + 3 children)

Opening Hours:  Click Here for details.

Commanding the shortest sea crossing between England and the continent, Dover Castle has a long and immensely eventful history. Many centuries before King Henry II began the great stone castle here in the 1160s, its spectacular site atop the famous ‘White Cliffs’ was an Iron Age hill fort, and it still houses a Roman lighthouse, one of the best-preserved in Europe. The Anglo-Saxon church beside it was once probably part of a Saxon fortified settlement: very soon after his victory at Hastings in 1066, this was converted by William the Conqueror into a Norman earthwork and timber-stockaded castle.

From then on Dover Castle was garrisoned uninterruptedly until 1958, a continuous nine-century span equalled only by the Tower of London and Windsor Castle. The stronghold hosted royal visits by Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Charles I’s Queen Henrietta Maria: and from 1740 until 1945, its defences were successively updated in response to every European war involving Britain.

But the reason Dover Castle features on this web site is for it's more recent roles, in particular the fact that it was from here that Operation Dynamo was masterminded... The Rescue from Dunkirk / Dunkerque.

For over 200 years the White Cliffs of Dover have been riddled with tunnels. Deep inside the cliffs you will find a hospital, used for treating troops in 1941. Deeper still, not open to the public, is a nuclear bunker!

Admiral Sir Bertram Home Ramsay
on the observation deck on the
cliffs below Dover Castle.

Between 26th May and 4th June 1940, under Ramsay's direction, 338,000 troops were rescued from Dunkirk, over 200,000 of them passing through Dover.

Admiral Ramsay's memorial
at Dover Castle